User blog:Jemjar/Infamy
This began as a comment I was writing on the Infamy page and sort of grew organically. I'm posting it here so I can just post the link to it in future. ---- 'Infamy, game design, re-levelling systems and the art of balance' The objective Fundamentally, the objective of any re-levelling system is to provide more gameplay, either to provide a positive experience through better value-for-money (more hours of gameplay) or to keep players engaged so that they continue spending money on the product. Re-levelling systems are rarely, if ever, motivated by some creative sense of artistry. They're often about cheaply adding a lot more content to a product, and in subscription-based and/or DLC-supported games they're a means to encourage players to spend more money. Never forget that Overkill doesn't charge for either of the Infamy updates. Therefore the Infamy updates exist to encourage players to spend money on other DLC. This doesn't necessarily mean that they're evil, it does mean that they have to be a business. The challenge The difficulty of designing any levelling system in a multiplayer game is that you have to balance two competing influences : power accumulation and player contribution. Power accumulation is simply a gameplay motivation, some people derive particular enjoyment from levelling up and from their character becoming stronger and more capable as they play. These people tend to be drawn to RPGs and RPG elements such as levelling systems and unlock trees. Thus by putting more unlocks in front of them, more things to level up and power up, they will keep playing. It's a great way to retain players and ensure that people are still playing your game years after release and still buying DLC for it years after release too. Player contribution is the idea that any new player joining the game for the first time shouldn't feel like a bystander, they should contribute to the game and should be a useful part of the team. Feeling useful is a positive response and one which will encourage new players to keep playing. It requires the power-gap between high level and low level players to be relatively limited, it requires high level players to play with low level players (to help the latter learn) without the low level players feeling they're utterly useless until they put in a 50 hour grind. Similarly, the idea of player contribution ensures that players who simply can't put in the hours that their friends can will still feel able to play with their friends and achieve something. Examples elsewhere Multiplayer games often struggle with this. Single player games don't have to worry about the latter and so the power accumulation is sometimes endless or can be "broken" when players progress too far (Skyrim ''and ''Oblivion are great examples of this, just take a look at the number of high level & high difficulty mods there are to restore a sense of being challenged) but multiplayer games have to pay close attention. One answer is a static levelling system and a level cap after which the player sees slow incremental gains. Take a look at how World of Warcraft handles the level cap, where the game barely begins before top level and it's really a grind at the level cap for the individual kit drops that gain you 1% performance each time you get a piece you need. Borderlands 2 is also worth a look, the weapon-drop grind and Bad Ass Rank do a similar thing, slowly allowing you to strengthen your build long after hitting a level-cap. But up to the level cap, both games handle this poorly - severely hampering the contribution of low level players against high level mobs rendering it almost impossible to bring a low level friend on a high level adventure. Re-levelling Re-levelling systems such as Infamy feed into all this. They encourage top level players to drop down to the bottom and do the early levels again, helping new players learn the levels and the change in playstyle when coping with a lack of skills can be refreshing. By putting a small power bonus into the equation, the power accumulation players are encouraged to take part, encouraged to reset and go through it all again for that extra few percent. It also encourages old players to recruit friends into the game. To give them their due, Overkill has in general handled the levelling system and the level design in a very clever manner. While level zero players are often a liability, within a few levels skills like Transporter, Sprinter and Hidden Blade allow low level players to be a productive part of a team. Numerous heists focus on moving bags back and forth while under fire (Watchdogs and Big Bank are two of the classics) and regardless of skills, two players will always beat one when it comes to moving bags around the map. Even in a firefight, while low level weapons are weaker and unmodified low level weapons are especially poor, a level zero player with an AMCAR can still gun down non-special enemies without too much trouble, especially if they are reasonably skilled at scoring headshots. Contrast this with games where level is factored into damage calculations (such as the examples of Borderlands 2 ''and ''World of Warcraft ''above, where a ten-level difference between player and enemy will result in almost zero damage output) and Payday 2 comes out rather favourably. From my personal gaming experience, the best example of re-levelling I can give is Final Fantasy XI, which had the structure built into its levelling "jobs" system entirely in order to encourage players to repeat the low level content as much as possible. Given that playing with PUGs was almost unavoidable in FFXI, it meant that new players coming through would end up working with more experienced players who could teach them the mechanics and the strategies. Infamy 2.0 Infamy 2.0 was released in March 2015, to some serious criticism from sections of the playerbase. The issue, based on my experience of gaming (and zero experience of game development), with Infamy 2.0 is that the rewards on offer for levels 6-25 (masks) are entirely cosmetic. Prior to that, Infamy was a system which encouraged the power accumulator players to keep playing, offering a relatively small reward for doing so. The additional infamy levels provided didn't take that away, but for the large number of V-100 players who got there because they wanted to be as powerful as possible, 25-100 offered absolutely nothing. The only people motivated by Infamy 2.0 are the ''customisers, IF they actually want one of the Infamy 2.0 masks, and the completionists, the people who will happily grind just for an achievement, just for reaching 100% completion. The former, the people who find the perfect mask and want to own it, aren't usually the kind of people who'll put the hours in to keep going that long. It's simply too much playtime. So Infamy 2.0 basically only pleases the completionists. It should be noted that some players were pleased to find that no gameplay benefits were available, that those who don't complete the grind aren't punished or limited in their effectiveness. In short, Infamy 2.0 doesn't affect player contribution, some players simply don't have the time or inclination to put hundreds of hours into Payday 2 and they aren't in any way punished for not doing so. If Infamy 2.0 had put a serious power step between 5-100 and 25-100, casual players with hardcore grind friends would find it difficult to play together. Criticism of Infamy 2.0 Many of these people would claim that others shouldn't complain about Infamy 2.0 as nothing has been taken away or lost. These people may never have heard of "opportunity cost", which can be defined as "the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen". Infamy 2.0 removes nothing, but it arguably adds almost nothing too. In doing so, however, it leaves Overkill potentially assuming that there's no need to do any more work on the infamy system. Notably, it leaves three possible future outcomes for Infamy : #No further development, no further expansion. #Expansion around the outside of the current Infamy grid and a progression beyond 25-100. #Restructuring of the Infamy tree/grid and/or addition of other bonuses to the current grid. The first of these is fairly likely and an option that has only really been added to the table by the release of Infamy 2.0 - further levels had been promised and were delivered and the chapter may be considered closed. This will inevitably lead to many players remaining at 5-100 until they grow bored of the game, stop playing it and stop buying DLC. The second option is arguably even worse. Those who remain at 5-100 (or below) up to the release of "Infamy 3" will find themselves so far from the edges of the grid that the motivation to put in at least two full runs to level 100 may be severely lacking. Combined with the disincentive that their contribution is reduced by the truly hardcore who'll race through the extra levels, this may lead to a wave of players quitting. Either the bonuses on offer will be minor and the dozens of hours required to access them will seem like a waste, or they'll be so significant that it may ruin balance between playing groups. The third option is dangerous, but not without merit. Thanks to the March 2015 experience bonus, many players are already hitting level 25-100, and offering these people 20 "minor" gameplay bonuses will have a serious impact on the people who saw Infamy 2.0 release and decided to stick at 5-100. However, a possible Infamy 2.1 would at least offer power accumulator players a motivation to keep going, something which is sorely lacking in Infamy 2.0. ---- Note : the following extension to this was written in the wake of GFreeman's comments and my own responses to his questions. It's largely an exercise in copying and pasting, so I'll be cutting down those comments via an edit. ---- My personal take on Infamy 2.0 How I'm treating Infamy 2.0 content As should be clear from the text above, I'm intending on entirely ignoring Infamy 2.0. I've reached 5-100, can play with all the top level builds I like and have no desire or need to move any further. If nothing else, I'd need to go through the entire levelling system twice more just to unlock a single new mask. A mask which I'll never wear because either I select a mask on the basis of achievements or I use one of the masks I bought at relatively exorbitant price when buying the Completely OVERKILL Pack. What would I do to fix Infamy? I presented a few options above, but the sad truth is that I don't think any of the three options above is a good solution to the problem - options 2 and 3 are both closing the gate after the horse has bolted. From what I've seen there's been a certain division between the hardcore infamy chasers who've used the March XP bonus to rush to 25-100 and the less intense people (with jobs, marriages, and children, for instance) who have parked at 5-100 and have no desire to move. That division is a real shame and will make further Infamy development more difficult to balance. From a game design perspective, re-levelling systems should be about seeking to achieve two simple objectives : #Encouraging experienced players to keep playing the game #Encouraging experienced players to recruit, play with and teach new players Meanwhile the developer has to stay clear of the pitfalls of either making new players feel useless or making experienced players feel that new players are useless. Overkill should be wary of any options which make the grind through the levels faster however it is exactly this that they have done, with half of the Infamy 2.0 levels offering XP boosts rather than any content at all. Accelerating the grind serves only to limit the extra "content" provided by the relevelling system and to ensure that a high-Infamy player playing introducing a newbie friend to Payday 2 will outstrip their apprentice very quickly. It was a bizarre design choice as XP requirements by level increase exponentially in almost any RPG system (including Payday 2's Reputation system) entirely in order to slow down ''the grinders as they go further. If anything, Infamy levels should probably carry XP ''penalties, although this should only be applied in conjunction with gameplay buffs to make the penalty worth taking. As a general philosophy, I would encourage Overkill to consider Infamy bonuses which apply to the entire crew and are preferably non-stackable. The former ensures that while a bonus might be powerful, it's shared with lower level players, therefore the power-gap isn't as obvious in-game. The latter ensures that players don't become obsessed with only playing with other 25-100 players. Minor quality of life bonuses would suffice, probably based on existing skills and perks. Imagine a system where, for example, Infamy levels 6 to 11 allowed you to choose the bottom perk from any perk deck and apply it to your entire crew (there are only 6 unique options). That way, a team of four friends who plan their builds together could choose the ones they need by Infamy level 7 to ensure they get the full range of bonuses, but equally a single level 11-100 player would always have the full range of bonuses activated, even when playing with level 0 heisters. You'd clearly be able to use the levels to make your character more powerful, yet with the benefits shared to your entire crew, other players would be improved rather than belittled by your presence. In a PvE co-op game, minor group buffs have almost no downside. Unlocking non-stackable crew bonuses achieves the first, without pushing the game into the pitfalls - new players are weaker, true, but the bonuses are minor and a player at the level cap (with all the unlocks) sees no difference to their performance when playing with low level team mates. An alternative in the same vein would be to activate a shared benefit of a single tier 1 skill with every Infamy level - some might have to be scrapped or reworked (Bullet Storm & Demolition Man are equipment dependent, Endurance would entirely de-value the aced verison) but we can assume at least 2 skills per tree, so a minimum of 10, and the principle would hold. Basic buffs for everyone. Not big enough to truly break the game, not stackable, but enough to make it easier for everyone present. Combining the two systems would offer two more "tiers" of Infamy (levels 6-11 for the shared perks, at least 12-21 for 10 shared basic skills) and make training a newbie friend much easier. If they were ambitious, Overkill could go further, doing cunning things like offering +1% Infamy item drop rate for every Infamy tier between the player's level and the lowest level player in the crew. That way 25-100 players would be actively encouraged to play with bottom level players. Infamy items aren't essential (they're all cosmetic) but instead of kicking a "noob", the hardcore would have an incentive to bring them along - further it would encourage the top level players to recruit new players to the PD2 community, a sort of "referral scheme". Actively encouraging experienced players to play with new players is tough, as there is little left to reward the experienced players with, but extra card draws or better odds on the card draws would be the obvious choice. If Infamy 25 gave you a +25% bonus to Infamous item drop rates if you do a heist with non-infamous crew-mates, you can expect to see loads of people setting up low level servers to help power level new players. It wouldn't necessarily be very educational, but it would be miles better than getting kicked for not being high enough level. Category:Blog posts